MICKEY KAUS: New York Times Cocoon, Verified!

A man named Tyler Pearson had posted a list of the 1000 Twittter accounts most commonly followed by the 677 New York Times staffers on the paper’s public list. It is, as you would expect, embarrassingly cocooned: Times staffers follow people who share the liberalish/leftish viewpoint of the Times itself, meaning these staffers are less likely to even find out discordant information. Which may be why they are so often surprised, or late to a story.

Actually, it’s not as bad as expected. It’s worse! Jack Shafer takes the Liebling-Optimality** award (in that he’s the first non-liberal on the list, and with 235 NYT followers well above anyone more conservative) but as far as I can see you have to go a long ways down, past acceptably self-critical conservative David Frum, and the NYT‘s own Ross Douthat to get to a genuine partisan ‘winger Tweeter –@Karl Rove, who’s followed by 67 Timesers that person is merely talking head Ari Fleischer, followed by 6.9% of Timesers. [Correction: I’d missed Rove. Thanks to alert reader NM for pointing him out] …

Of the 1000, you could count those who oppose comprehensive immigration reform on the fingers of one hand, and you wouldn’t need the thumb (and maybe not the pinkie). …

Coming soon: The memo from @deanbaquet telling reporters gee, maybe they should branch out a bit and include some Republicans on their feeds! Whoever gets that Times affirmative action traffic will have some MSM-influencing power. …

Not on the list: Byron York, Instapundit, Rich Lowry, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham., Jonah Goldberg, Conn Carroll. No Powerliners, no Red Staters. certainly no Ace of Spades.

To be fair, there’s one NYT editor who pitches links to me. I assume that means he follows. But maybe not!